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Updated: April 30, 2025
The road runs by the docks at Singapore, which are enormous and extend all along the coast up to the town. On the way we pass men of all nations. There are natives of India, companies of Sikhs, Madrassees like Ramaswamy, who is well on his way back to his master now, Cingalese, Tamils with frizzy heads, little Japanese ladies in rickshaws, plenty of Chinese, and many Malays.
Until a possible passenger comes in sight, the queer little men, many of them under five feet in height, stand beside their rickshaws, smoking their tiny little brass pipes with bowls about half as big as a thimble. Their clothes are very simple.
The dark wooden wharf forms a frame for gay figures in pure pinks and greens and yellows, and on the roads there run past continually the funniest sturdy little men with their loin-cloths tucked up, pulling light-looking chairs on high wheels with people in them. These chairs are called rickshaws and are the chief way of getting about.
But where were those butterfly girls, who dance with fan and battledore on our cups and saucers? The rickshaws were a pleasant experience, the one-man perambulators; and the costume of the rickshaw-runners was delightful, and their gnarled, indefatigable legs.
A score of sedans and rickshaws were at once engaged; and Tommy and the other women carried the valises and bags for them, each attended by the owner. They were to remain three days in Canton. Dinner was the first ceremony they performed after they went to the hotel, and the consul joined the party by invitation.
Along the compound wall that gives on the street are the servants' quarters, the house for the rickshaws, the stables for the big mules and the Peking carts, and the house of the gateman. Life is none too secure in these compounds. Robbers abound, and scale the walls, and slip from the roofs of adjacent buildings into the compounds. Every household is in a constant state of alertness, of defense.
And with this fine clear note was the elusive voice of another cricket that had such a marked ventriloquial character that we could never tell whether he lived in the rose bushes or in the trees. His note was the music of silver bells upon the naked feet of rickshaw boys, the tinkle that keeps time to the soft padding of native feet in the rickshaws of Nairobi at night.
And, as there are neither rickshaws nor carriages for hire in Samarinda, I was compelled to walk. It was really too hot to move. In five minutes my clothes were as wet as though I had fallen in the river. The green silk lining of my sun-hat crocked and ran down my face in emerald rivulets. When I had covered half the distance I paused beneath a waringin tree to rest.
It is a yearly reception, I believe, given to all and sundry to keep them loyal, the very thing to do it too! and I know another country, north and west, where such shows might have this effect if it is not too late Drove there in our hired victoria in the hot dusk, and dust, in a rout of carriages, gharries, rickshaws, dog-carts, and every sort of wheeled craft imaginable; nabobs and nobodies, spry young soldiers in uniform, minus hats, driving ladies in chiffons and laces, natives, civilians, eurasians, now one ahead then the other, till we met in a grand block at the great gates, and then strung out orderly-wise and went on at a walk.
Bakshish they call it here too; that word accompanies you round the world! I think we'll go for a jaunt, if you're ready, as the light falls quickly here. There is no difficulty in getting two rickshaws, and how they spin along.
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